Monthly Archive

Trolling the internet for BA property, as we like to do, we found this stunning italian-style palace, Palacio Estrugamou, that was recently sold: http://www.leticiafirpo.com/fichaventa.php?codigo=73

Here’s more: http://estrugamou.blog.com/

They were asking for $1.2M in late 2006. I think someone got a screaming bargain…

We set-off on Sunday to take the fast-ferry, that runs hourly, from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay. But we were late getting over there and the seats were sold-out on the next two boats… So, we strolled along the banks of Puerto Madera, then we just kept strolling all the way to the antique market in San Telmo… a place that continues to seduce us…

San Telmo is like an older, yet attractive, forbidden seductress… We at first baulked at her overtures. “It’s too dangerous there”, we thought. But over time we’ve found that the architecture, those beautiful buildings, the authenticity of (most of) it… it’s the ‘real Buenos Aires’ as one reader recently put it… is indeed desirable. And it’s still very cheap.

We’ll get you some pictures and a more thorough report on the place soon…

Well it happened… Just like that Bush twin who famously got her purse stolen at an outdoor restaurant in Buenos Aires, my sister got her’s stolen today… And your editor was present and accounted for when it happened, just like the bungling Secret Service…

Being the trusting country-girl that she is, my sister put her purse under her chair when we ate, a tempting mark for some thieving dirt-bags…

 A suspicious man came up while we were eating and drawing our attention to the flyer in his hand asked for directions to a restaurant. My wife and I immediately knew something was up… Locals don’t ask foreigners for directions. We waved him off saying we didn’t know, keeping an eye on him. Our stuff was secure, or so we thought, and we didn’t think much of it…

When we were getting up to leave my sister realized her purse was gone. Of course, we knew immediately who did it, at least we knew one of his scuzzy little pals had slipped a hand under my sister’s chair when we were distracted… it only took a second, as the cliche goes…

But at least we took pleasure knowing that they didn’t get much for their trouble. My sister is a recent college grad and flat-broke. She had about 40 pesos in her purse and really nothing else… credit cards were immediately cancelled. The only real problem is her driver’s license which will be a minor hassle to replace…

I wish so badly I’d caught them in the act. I was wearing some hard-soled boots at the time. And I think I picked up a few moves from watching that street fighting video about 20 times…

We went to a dinner party last night in the San Telmo neighborhood, hosted by an American couple who have lived here for 3 years, a friend of a friend (we hadn’t met before)…

When we were given the directions we were told that the taxi driver might advise us against going there, that it’s dangerous, but to ignore him…

Sure enough, the neighborhood did feel sketchy. (We’ve been there during the day, but this was our first time at night.) The lights are dim. The buildings are dark.

When we arrived at the address of the party we thought we must be in the wrong place… no lights seemed to be on… We looked up and down the desolate streets, looking for signs of life…

 But then a head popped out of the next door over and said in a slight New York accent, “The doorbell’s there, but this is the entrance. Come on in.”

The house was in a grand colonial style with a  lot of outdoor living space. The outside was lit with candles and some dim lighting. There were plants and waterfountains. It was nice.

We met the other guests. All accept one Argentine wife were Americans…

For the most part everyone was very well travelled and interesting, which was good, because earlier in the day at an outdoor bistro near the Recoleta cemetary we found ourselves within earshot of some very loud American tourists sharing intimate details of their lives to some other American tourists they had just met… ughh…

At the dinner party we never really got a good look at the house. The lights were always too dim and we didn’t want to be too nosey…We understood that it was under construction. And all the background that we got on it was that they had bought it from an African friend who was divorcing his third Argentine wife (he had two at the time evidently) and that they promised him they wouldn’t tear it down… There was apparently little in the way of electricity, little plumbing, and no heat when they bought it. But the part that we went into for drinks had evolved far from there and was quite comfortable…

Our burning question that never got answered was, “Why San Telmo?!”

Every Argentine we talk to says to steer clear of the place… It’s dangerous…

But we really do know why… the buildings are beautiful. San Telmo used to be rich. But in the late 1800s the place was over-run by yellow fever. The rich people fled to the north and their houses were taken over by the poor people and it’s been that way ever since.

You can get a lot for your money. I don’t know how much these people paid, but I’m guessing not a lot, and the place was huge… and they had another empty lot that they were turning into their garden. It was going to be nice.

San Telmo as we understand it has a lot of artists and musicians, a rapidly growing bohemian culture. It’s also home to Buenos Aires’ famous tango houses. So, culturally San Telmo may well be rich and vibrant. We’ll have to spend some more time in the area to find out… 

What gets me though is that you go out your door at night and you feel like you’re on the set of Blade-Runner… that’s a little hard to swallow… Especially in a city that’s cheap even in the nicest areas, you can be somewhere nice and safe. But who knows, maybe we’re missing the boat in San Telmo…

We’ll continue to report to you, dear reader, about the happenings here in BA, where it’s almost always an adventure…

I’ll apologize in advance as this post has nothing to do with Buenos Aires or Argentina…

But if you’d like a good testosterone boost, and a look at some impressive defense/fighting skills you’ll want to see this video:

http://www.flicklife.com/f357cb02c655671a432f/Bad_ass_takes_on_5_guys.html

This guy must be a trained boxer… with a good stance and a heckuva jab…

Of no concern to anyone except your editor… our little blog, started about two and a half months ago, has gotten over 25,000 visits… 

It’s been a humbling learning process, starting from scratch like this.

Before coming down to Argentina, we helped build and manage a daily email newsletter with a list of over 400,000 subscribers… so, getting less than a hundred ‘visits’ per day to this blog seemed like such small potatoes we almost wanted to stop bothering with it.

But things have picked-up and we enjoy writing to you about what’s happening down here…

If there’s anything you’d like to hear about from way south of the border… places, pictures, thoughts, whatever… just leave a comment on this thread and we’ll see what we can do.

Also, if you don’t want to miss out on anything then click on the subscribe link in the upper left column and get updates delivered via email…

 Thanks for reading!

WB

Last night we had a delicious white wine with our dinner that has become our favorite white… It was a torrentes, made from a unique Argentine high altitude grape.

We discovered the torrentes wines on our first trip to Salta last year. We visited, what’s considered, one of the highest altitude wineries in the world (~8,000 ft)… Colome, in the foothills of the Andes (pictured above).

Torrentes wine is crisp without being tart. We highly recommend it, if you can get your hands on a bottle…

Here are more pictures from Colome, which in itself is a very special place…

Buenos Aires is a big bustling city. There’s a lot of noise and people out and about almost around-the-clock.

When we first got here, we were, admittedly, uptight about the place…

But when you get used to it, when the daily scenes become more familiar, it’s surprisingly easy to relax here…

Today, the sun came out. It was cool and crisp yet warm in the sun, as autumn sets in for us here in the southern hemisphere. The weather put everyone in a good mood. It was a pleasure just to be out in the streets.

We talked to a friend today about the appeal of Palermo Viejo… that it’s a relaxed place… The buildings are low. The narrow cobblestone streets slow the cars down (sort of). The people are young and carefree. It’s like a small town in a big city… When we had lunch there the other day we heard English from nearly half of the surrounding lunch tables… some of it a lispy sort of English…

The area has a lot of gay English and American men… which we take as a bullish sign for real estate in the neighborhood. As in New York, San Francisco, London, and probably in many other cities we’re not aware of, gay men have pioneered once downtrodden areas into hip and desirable neighborhoods…  

Anyway, we think that Palermo Viejo, and especially Soho, is still a viable and sustainable real estate hot spot. We’re going back to the area tomorrow to scout out some more properties…

But, Palermo Viejo has some definite negatives that we should also point out…

First, a lot of it is ugly and rundown. It’s still an “emerging neighborhood”. You can be on a very attractive street, walk over a couple blocks and… uugghh, it looks like hell…

Second, it was a poor neighborhood so many of the houses’ interiors have been hacked up to accommodate poorer families, as I wrote about in my post ‘Sausage Houses — The Problem With Soho’ 

The last drawback is that it is arguably less safe than other areas like Recoleta and Puerto Madera. There are less people in the streets, which implies slightly less security. But we’d wager that the real security difference is negligible, as the place is home to loads of foreigners, but it’s something to consider.

We’ll spare you further ramblings about Palermo, dear reader, but we’ll undoubtedly come up with something else to bore you with tomorrow… till then…

We’ve pointed out how the BA real estate market may be getting over-heated… but as we’ve recently stumbled on some interesting properties we’re going to hedge those comments… :) and say that it really depends on the neighborhood and the individual property.

Good deals are definitely still out there, but they’re not everywhere…

Some of the pre-construction deals look pretty good in Palermo Viejo/Hollywood, a new loft-style apartment for $60-$100k… My clients are not on the market for that kind of thing, but might be good for someone. Though we’ve noted the rental market is getting more staturated. It won’t be as easy as it used to be to rent the place out.

 By the way, the agencies with the most listings for the Palermo area are:

http://ojopropiedades.com.ar/
http://www.shenk.com.ar/
http://fastpropiedades.com/

To find a special place, you really have to look diligently, on foot in the neighborhood and online. Many agencies do not put things on the Argentine MLS… and for some reason sellers will use small agencies where it’s impossible to find the listing, except for seeing the sign outside the property… That’s been our experience anyway…

It’s all worth it when you find a fantastic apartment/house in the best part of a great area… for a fraction of what it would cost in the US or Europe…

Tributo a Emerson, Lake, and Palmer By The Gauchos

Iron Maiden, The Trooper, By The Gauchos

http://gauchosalta.blogspot.com/

We’ve commented recently on the BA real estate market, wondering if there might be a bubble… While we do think there is a short-term bubble, our general feeling is that Argentina has nowhere to go but up. We’re bullish on the country. But rest assured it will be a bumpy ride…

The Argentine economy is an enigma. We’ve read numerous commentaries and analyse-es which can be summed-up to the following… strong recovery, peso will go up, as will inflation, price-control policies will create problems, Argentina will probably prosper, but anything can happen…

The more we learn about the country, the more time we spend here, the less we seem to know about it…

Crime is an enigma here. While we feel perfectly safe all the time. We do read in the paper about the occasional kidnapping attempt, or armed home-invasion on locals or foreign nationals somewhere in the country… As much as we’d rather not think about it, it does happen. While all the expats and Argentines we’ve talked to have hardly ever had any kind of problem… We’re not afraid, though maybe we should be… (Of course, the biggest danger for tourists/foreigners is getting hit by a car.)

Even poverty is an enigma. We see a lot of the same people out begging each day… We’ve been told that most of them are gypsies and it’s a way of life for them. We first thought that that was nonsense. But the more we’ve observed these people the more it seems to be true.

We live in one of the nicest areas of the city… but there’s a shanty-town not even ten blocks away (that we never see, except from a nearby over-pass)…

The weather is great most of the time… but the g*ddamn mosquitoes are enough to drive a man insane… (We’ve been told that this is a very unusual invasion… the stores have sold-out of repellent.)

In the streets, except for extreme examples, you can’t tell if people are rich or poor. How much of the famed Argentine middle-class has bounced back after the 2001 crisis? No one seems to know.

And we’re well aware that our vision is blurry. We’re foreigners in a foreign land. Our world in Argentina is an insulated one. We try to break-out, but we never truly will, or maybe even want to…

Argentina does this to you. It regularly stimulates some strange unknown part of the brain… making you wonder about things you wouldn’t usually consider in Anytown USA. This is a kind of stimulation that many could probably do without. But for us, it’s a natural high that we enjoy and it makes us call Argentina home…

We’re headed out the door to an Argentine asado, a BBQ, in the suburbs… We enjoy living in the city, but already miss the quiet, majestic, wide-open spaces of rural Salta…

Today we met with a quirky Argentine writer who’s half French. She thinks it’s funny that we, me and my colleague, find Argentina a desirable place to live while according to her most Argentines want to get the hell out! The main-drawbacks in her mind are the government and the economy. We certainly understand her point.

But to us there’s just something interesting about Argentina… something adventurous… a ‘yo no sais quoi’ about the place. And we’ll do our best to ignore and side-step the government as much as possible, just as we’d do in the US !

 Many Argentines that we’ve met have lived abroad at one time or another, but the weather and quality of life brings them back…

 There’s an authenticity and a relaxed earnestness about life here that makes it appealing. We’re not going anywhere with this, but thought you’d like to know…

Hasta manana…

We talk a lot about real estate in this blog. But the fact is that real estate is merely a side business for us, a hobby, a distraction…

Our primary businesss is publishing. And part of the reason for coming here is because Buenos Aires is a Latin American publishing hub.

Widely-influential newspapers, in the spanish-speaking world, like the Clarin and La Prensa are published here. Oxford University Press recently opened a new office. So did Google (they’re sort of publishers), their third largest.

We’ve come to do the same thing… on an immensely smaller scale…

We’ll be publishing investment advisory information for Latin American investors… To that end we’ve been looking for Argentine investment analysts and writers…

However, we’re getting involved in a new project, one in which English will be the primary language. So, if you are, or know of a savvy, young, go-getter, wordsmith who could use some work in the Buenos Aires area, then please get in touch with me.

Just leave a comment on this thread and I’ll be notified [unless you've commented on this blog before, it won't be public]. Let me know what you bring to the table.

Cheers!

We try not to sugar-coat at Discovering Buenos Aires. We want to give you the straight dope on what we see on the ground here in BA…

One unlikely outcome from our trip to Salta, where we could reflect with a clearer head about the big city, was that we now think the property market here may be getting tapped-out.

We think we’re seeing some signs of a possible real estate bubble, at least short-term…

The market is hot no-doubt. Too hot. It smells of the bubble we just bounced from in southern Florida…

Of course, it’s very different from the creative-mortgage fueled bubble in the US… there are no mortgages here…

But, the symptoms are the same, for sale signs are sprouting up like weeds. Another BA blogger recently remarked on the proliferation of such signs in San Telmo…

This doesn’t mean that you still can’t find good deals, you can… but they are getting further and further between. Also, many sellers have greater expectations about how much money they can make…

If you look at the Buenos Aires Craigslist Rentals, they are saturated with foreigners (or others on their behalf) trying to rent out investment apartments they bought.

In Salta we spoke with yet another well-informed Argentine architect, a Porteno (from BA), who again confirmed our instincts regarding the market, that it’s probably due for a short-term slip… things have risen too fast in too short a time.

Also, the general economy could be due for a check in the near future. It’s pretty much fact that the old specter, inflation, in Argentina is creeping up briskly. And the government’s efforts to hold it down will only aggravate the situation.

We still think Argentina is a great long-term bet for numerous reasons…

But we wouldn’t pursue real estate here in the city as aggressively, as one would’ve wanted to maybe a year ago. We’re on the tail end of a good run.

That doesn’t go for all of Argentina. By all accounts, good buys can still be had around the country…

We could be entirely wrong about this. We have some clients coming into town this week, so we’ll get their opinion… but we’re  going to give them the same advice we’re giving you dear reader… Let’s be selective, look around, and bide our time. There’ll be some better deals for us down the road…

After two and half straight months in Buenos Aires with no respite from city life, we finally made our escape to a remote area of Salta province in the foot-hills of the Andes mountains of northwestern Argentina.

The land there is a lot like the southwest of the US… Arizona or New Mexico…

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

From Buenos Aires it’s a two hour flight to Salta city. However, Argentine airports and airlines are dependably unreliable, so, you can almost count on your flight being delayed. Our flight was a good 4 hours late… (One fringe benefit of this is that if you want to change a flight, to a new date, they will do it for free, which doesn’t make up for the chronic delays, but, it’s nice…)

The downtown of Salta city is charming…

The shopping is good… things are cheap. But there’s not a whole lot to do. As a tourist you probably wouldn’t want to stay there for more than a day or two, as there’s a ton to see around the province…

The land outside Salta city is a lot like California, with pretty rolling green hills…

However, after about an hour of driving into the mountains, the lushness gives way to a sparse high-altitude desert (8,000+ feet)…

To get where we were going would require four and a half hours of rough, bumpy, zig-zagging, dusty, dirt-road driving…

Some places are downright dangerous, a tight road on a cliff-side with no guard-rail and large truck coming the other way…

But after enduring the brutal car ride we had a wonderful time enjoying the sanctuary of the remote ranch retreat..

We did a lot of horseback riding, the main mode of transportation in the area, with a local gaucho as our guide…

We were hungry after a long horse-ride, so, we’d stop for a lunch served-up gaucho-style…

We visited a couple local towns. This is a no-man’s land outside Cafayate..

Cafayate is sort of like Santa Fe, New Mexico would’ve been about 50 years ago, with wineries… a very pretty area.

We had hardly any internet access out in the Argentine wilds and enjoyed being disconnected… But we’re back now and catching-up, slowly…

We’re still recovering from the return trip… Our flight was in the morning, so, we had to leave the ranch early, early as in 2am… we drove for 5 hours back through the rough roads to make our flight (we took a wrong turn which added a good 30 minutes to the trip).

This time your editor was not the driver, and for that he suffered dearly… Yes, we got car-sick and found ourselves wretching on the side of the road on more than one occasion.

And once we reached the airport we discovered that our flight was re-routed from another airport, and we had to take an hour long bus ride to get there… ouch… When we finally got home it felt as if the internal gyroscope of our frontal lobe had been turned to scrambled eggs.

But it was well worth it. The lower the lows, the higher the highs, dear reader…

More details to come about our trip and it’s aftermath…

Fellow expat blogger, Alan Patrick, has created a very nice self-guided tour itinerary for the city center at http://www.buenostours.com/buenos-aires-tour-1-city-center-suggested-walking-route

 Alan is a former walking-tour guide, so, he knows what he’s talking about.

 We have some family and friends coming into town tomorrow, so, if we have the time (they’ll only be in town briefly) we’ll take this tour with them…

After this weekend, dear readers, you’ll get a needed respite from our prattle… We’re headed up to Salta province in the northwest of Argentina where we’ll have very limited internet access, so during that time we will not be updating this blog… but rest assured we’ll let you know all about it upon our return…

Happy Easter!

Yesterday’s property appointment was rescheduled, so instead of seeing any nice architecture or hot real estate, you’ll have to endure a bit of annoying rambling, on our part, about the ‘help’ situation here in Argentina…

We’ve noticed how most upper/upper-middle-class Argentine households have a maid that usually lives with the family. And most houses are designed with a service section of the house… service staircase, maid’s room, and laundry.

In many cases the maid’s room is a converted garage, the designated maid’s room, or something similar… a perfectly fine, if spartan, living area.

Other times, the maid’s room is a depressing little hollow in a basement, storage area, or a converted closet… where when you see it you want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, it makes you uncomfortable…

I think in most cases this comes about because the household is operating in a very utilitarian manner… Why spend any money on the maid’s area? 

Where am I going with this? Good question… I guess I’m just relaying a bit of culture shock…

Obviously, there’s a class system in Argentina. Perhaps less so than many other countries. But, certainly more so than the US and what we’re used to .

If you look indiginous here I think life is going to be harder for you than if you’re of more European descent… Unfair but true. The planet still has a long way to go before there’s any real racial equality, if we humans are even capable of it…

Yesterday it was a holiday here in Buenos Aires to honor the War for the Malivinas, which I wrote about on Sunday… We didn’t allow ourselves much of a holiday here at Discovering BA, no, we were chained to our computer as usual.

But we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out over at the Buenos Aires Design Center last night. The place was buzzing with holiday activity when we arrived around 8PM.

We decided on the Italian restaurant we like… Primafila, as their terrace looked the most appealing.

It was a full moon out and the night air still had some of the warmth from the day… it was perfect.

After some excessive and delicious gorging, we waddled back home at around 10pm.

We are going to look at a house for sale today… we’ll report to you about that tomorrow, dear reader, if it’s anything interesting…

Buenos Aires has some really great classical architecture, but we feel that we don’t do a very good job of featuring it in this blog…

To compensate for our short-comings, let us point you over to our fellow bloggers at Buenos Aires Weekly who have some great interior photos of the ‘La Prensa’ newspaper building, which was once considered as ‘the most magnificent building in Buenos Aires’.

Definitely worth a look at… http://akworld.net/BAweekly/?p=401

We were going to avoid this subject because it is a charged topic for Argentines and because of our scant knowledge of the accompanying history… However, at Discovering Buenos Aires our ignorance is one of our endearing traits, almost our raison d’etre here in BA, so, we’ll cast aside our better-judgment and give you our take on this 25th anniversary of the conflict…

We recently read an article over at the International Herald Tribune, which if we weren’t living in Argentina, we probably wouldn’t have noticed anything, but since we are here in Argentina it seemed to us that the article was slanted unfairly towards the Brits…

The Anglos have the attitude that Argentina should give up it’s silly claim on the islands. But, geographically (and historically as you’ll see), one would think that Argentina would have rights to the islands 300 miles from the Argentine mainland.

However, British imperial claims die hard even if they be thousands of miles away from Britain… British institutions are indeed strong and foster economic growth, ie. Hong Kong,  but does that give them ownership of dirt they “found” a million-miles away in some else’s backyard?

As we understand it this war was completely avoidable, as most tend to be, and because of the pigheadedness and arrogance of the countries leaders (mostly trying to score political points) just under a thousand had to die…

Also we hasten to mention that the Malvinas are desolate, fairly useless, little islands that no one would really need to fight about anyway…

Fellow blogger Yanqui Mike has some background details (which are accurate according to other sources, not that we don’t trust Yanqui Mike…)

“With independence, they [Argentina] got the Malvinas from Spain as a package deal.

“The UK then signed a treaty recognizing Argentina’s independence.

“The newly minted Argentina sent a governor, built a prison, and started to farm and trade. A few years later, the settlers gave birth to some babies…the first people ever born on the islands.

“Now comes the yanquis [USA]. The Argentine governor of the islands had placed some pretty strict rules on the hunting of seals. Not long after, he caught a US merchant ship illegally hunting seals and seized it.

“The US consul in Buenos Aires protested that his government didn’t even recognize Argentina’s ownership of the Malvinas.

“The US sent a warship to get the ship back but the yanqui captain overstepped his orders and destroyed the entire Argentine settlement.

“The UK then took advantage of the confusion and seized what was left of the islands without firing a shot. They later deported all the Argentines. That was 1833.

Of course this was a sore-spot for Argentina for many years… And more from Wikipedia about the period leading up to the war…

“…Argentina was in the midst of a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest against the repressive military junta that was governing the country. The Argentine military government, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to play off long-standing feelings of nationalism by invading the islands, although they never thought that the United Kingdom would respond. The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when 50 Argentines landed on the British dependency of South Georgia and raised their flag, an act that is seen as the first offensive action in the war. On 2 April, Galtieri ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, triggering the Falklands War.

“Britain was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, but launched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. After combat resulting in 258 British and 649 Argentine deaths, the British eventually prevailed and the islands remained under British control. However, as of 2007, Argentina shows no sign of relinquishing its claim to the Falkland Islands (the claim is included in the National Constitution).”

The victory was a political boost for the Thatcher government and a wave of nationalism swept the UK… The loss was politically devastating to the military dictatorship of Argentina, which was forced out and a democratic election took place shortly thereafter.

Because of the attack by the military junta Argentina’s claim to the islands has been discredited to this day. But the historical rights of Argentina over the Malvinas are undeniable. Of course, the people of the islands, the Falklanders, who have been there for generations and consider themselves British also have their rights.

Argentina is still healing from the wounds inflicted by the military dictatorship. The loss of the Falklands War was a painful part of those troubled times. But Argentina should not suffer forever because of the sins of unelected leaders during a period of turmoil.

There must be a diplomatic solution to this, similar to what Britain negotiated with the Chinese in regard to Hong Kong… The British can only ignore Argentina for so long.